One of my famous drawings that means that big things are moving in the Rose household. My husband has a love/hate relationship with these drawings.

In progress:

I had all the cuts done at Home Depot. The gentleman that helped me was amazing. It has a BIG sign that says they do not do exact cuts, but you never would have known it with the double measuring and careful care he showed my project. He made it so much easier! I just brought it home and put it together like a puzzle. Well… sort of.

The three horizontal boards were too long, so we took them back and had 1/2 inch cut off. We needed to cut a hole in the beadboard for the plug with only a power drill. That was a hour long fight, but once the bead board was on and the cuts were right, it really did go together like a giant puzzle.

Because my wonderful husband was wrangling kids the whole time I did this (outside, in the beautiful sunny weather!) So I took my own ‘in progress’ shots of building, nailing, sanding, painting, sanding, and painting some more.

I LOVE the beadboard detail behind it. That isn’t in the tutorial, but I had seen it on so many other projects I love that it seemed like the perfect fit for this one too.

Once the actual built-in was done, I couldn’t take how dirty the wall looked all around the newly painted shelf/hooks, so I had to paint it too. My patient husband watched me go BACK to Home Depot (for the 4th time that day. No joke.) and then I spent the evening painting too.

This picture doesn’t do this color justice at all. But I am adding it for reference. It’s a really nice grey/blue.

I always try to put on the last coat of paint on a project right before I head to bed. It helps me not mess up my beautiful paint jobs with trying to decorate while I am still dealing with tacky paint. It is very important. But this morning, I got up at 7 or so, and by 8am, it was done:

I just LOVE it. I could stare at it for hours. lol! It matches the mantel project perfectly but without too much coordination making it seem forced. It looks updated and makes a purely functional space beautiful! I’m thrilled. I love walking in my door now.

Thursday, March 13, 2014

What a winter it has been. That’s not said with feeling, but with incredible amounts of exhaustion. Family members getting cancer, family members dying, serious childhood illnesses, car accident, failing grades, teen drama, hurt husbands, and the oppressive darkness that hung over it all… I just can’t talk about it anymore.

I took another unexpected hiatus. I’m sorry. Winter tends to do that to me, and I don’t like it. But living in the greyest place on earth has a few drawbacks. And the biggest one is winter. You just don’t see the sun for 3 months. Like pretty much at all. In the short hours of daylight we actually do get, it is cloudy and dark. Human hibernation is completely possible. I have lived it these past 4 years, each winter.

Anyhow. I’m back. What a strange season to be on the other side of. Depression is a personal thing. Some people feel overwhelming numbness. That is not the way it effects me. It is like turning all my senses on high. Hearing a thump is painful (and I have 3 boys!), listening to kids cry turns into nails on chalkboard, and anything smelly or even strong has to be banished due to limited indoor airspace. I feel as though I am choking if someone sprays cologne across the house. It’s awful. And I spend a LOT of time ‘hiding’. By hiding, I mean, I teach school, make my kids food, then take a nap with the toddler, then set up some sort of activity (which includes the tv about 50% of the time) then go into my room to reread a book I have read 4 times. It’s not a ‘bad’ place to be. My children are loved and cared after… but when you know me in the summer… well, I am a totally different person. And a different mom.

It’s the second week in March. The days are almost a reasonable length, the sun has poked through at least 3 times in the past two weeks and I got to work in the garden in shirt-sleeves.

I’m breaking out of this funk. And thank God!

Yesterday was incredible! At about 11am the sun broke through the clouds and I could hear the angels singing it was so lovely. The sky was the color blue that you only see if you have had a lot of rain lately… the kind where you can see from Mt Rainier all the way to Mt St Helens. 50* and sunny. I dumped myself into house cleaning and projects with a fervor that I didn’t know I still had after this winter of mourning and darkness and managing chaos.

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

My baby is 3. I can’t believe it. Logan was this age when I found out I was having Luke. That will not be happening again. But thinking back to that seems close. Almost too close. Like we took a jump in there somewhere and I missed something.

That being said, I love having a toddler so much more than a baby. He is an incredible person and I am so happy to be seeing more and more of that person as he gets older.

This year, his birthday party had to be pushed back due to a funeral that was on his real birthday. But to be honest, he barely registered that it was late, and couldn’t have cared less. I cared, I felt it intensely as I mourned a dear cousin and didn’t even get to see my baby. I felt robbed. On many levels. But knowing that he barely noticed really brings home that these seasons pass and kids are resilient.

I threw this party together in three days. I used things I owned and then borrowed the rest. It came in under budget by a lot… and I am glad, because I ended up needing it. lol!

For the three days we prepared for his party, Luke was obsessed with everything ‘zebra’. I bought a cake mix that looked like it had zebra stripes and he was a goner! That cake mix came everywhere with us all day long. Even to the library.

This cake mix seemed simple enough. Just follow the directions and you had a beautiful cake that looked like zebra stripes when you cut it.

Yeah. Not so much.

The stripes didn’t adhere correctly and so when I took the cakes out of the pans for frosting (and hour before the party) the cake fell apart in big rounds.

But not even that detered me! I can fix that with frosting, right??

Yeah. Then my frosting curddled.

It was now t-minus 50 minutes from having 4 families come over for dinner and I didn’t have a cake.

My husband, in a moment of genius, decided that we were going to Safeway. He saved the day.

It was genius. And I had plenty in the budget to cover it and a few more circus cookies while we were there. We were home in plenty of time for guests to show up and the table still looked great.

Most of the kids I invited were also 3 year olds. So instead of setting up games or anything complicated, I just printed out circus animal coloring pages and read circus books from the library. They were completely content.